


When I'm Dead And Gone (Will They Sing About Me)

by everyperfectsummer



Series: Author's favorites [9]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:12:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9973364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: It starts with a photo album, over and over again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/gifts).



> Shoutouts to alecsloveformagnus, gay-spider-lightwood, and thinking-is-an-act-of-rebellion, who looked at this for me!  
> Trigger warnings at the end.

 

It starts with a photo album, lovingly bound in blue cloth, perhaps the plainest thing Magnus has ever designed. Perhaps the most important, too.

 

_“Magnus,” Karigan says, “What’s this?” She’s holding up a tattered book that, before sunlight had bleached it to near white, had once been blue._

 

Alec picks it up one day, and idly flips through the pages for a few minutes until finding a faded picture of Magnus, arm in arm with a woman, the two of them looking happy and in love. He picks up the book and brings it into the kitchen, where Magnus is mixing up some concoction that resembles Izzy’s cooking - that is to say, doesn’t appear to actually be food at all, despite clearly being formed of food ingredients.

 

“Magnus?”

 

“Hmm?” he says, stirring the ghastly mixture on the stove with an air of intense concentration.

 

“I just - I found something, and I wanted to ask you about it.”

 

Magnus looks up, sees the book and the page it’s open to, and freezes, the flame on the stove flickering off, the entire pot vanishing from sight.

 

_He looks over at the blue book, the book that has ended so many relationships, and deepened so many others. By now, he’s stopped trying to predict how the conversation will go._

 

_“It’s an album for the people I love,” he answers. “Not everybody, of course. Just those who lived after cameras were invented.”_

 

“Is this Etta? The woman you loved before?” Alec asks.

 

_Karigan smiles, gently. “And is this Max’s father? A-something?”_

 

_“Rafael’s father too,” Magnus says, looking distant. “Max had a Nephilim brother, named Rafael, and a Nephilim father, Alec.”_

 

“I love you,” Magnus says, sounding oddly insistent, “just because I love her doesn’t mean I can’t love you, Alec.”

 

_“I love them all, still,” he tells her, “but I love you, too.”_

 

Alec shakes his head. “I don’t care that you love her.” Then he hesitates. “No, that’s a lie. I do care.”

 

Magnus is clearly trying to look expressionless. Not well enough to fool Alec, but just well enough to break his heart.

 

“But not in a bad way!” Alec blurts out, trying to get his point out as fast as possible, to reassure his boyfriend. “Magnus, look. You’re immortal and I’m not. You were alive before me and will be a long time after, and - and I want you to have been happy before and to be happy after I’m gone. I want you to be loved your whole life, by real people, not just memories. So it makes me happy to know that people have loved you before we met, and to think that other people will love you once I’m gone.”

 

_“I love you too, too,” she says, before laughing a little. “Too squared?”_

 

Magnus’s expression softens, filling with love.

 

“Not that I think romantic love is the end all be all of life!” Alec adds. “If you want to surround yourself with nothing but platonic friends for the next five hundred years that’s good. But if you go out the year after I die and get married to someone who loves you, that’s good too. As long as you’re around people who love you, romantically, platonically, however, people who appreciate the wonderful person you are...you deserve to be loved, in whatever form that love comes in, for your entire immortal life, including after I die.”

 

_“Anyway,” she says, laughter dying out, smile remaining, “could you tell me about him?”_

 

“Be happy when I’m gone,” Alec says. “Promise me you’ll let yourself be happy.”

 

_“Well,” Magnus begins, “He was brave. And kind. He protected everyone he loved, even me, even though I didn’t need protecting. And I think he would have liked you...”_

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for: food mentions, death of Alec and Etta (as several hundred years pass.)


End file.
